Friday, March 06, 2009

THE POLITICAL PSYCHOPATHOLOGY ACCELERATES

In "Win or Lose, The Left Will Remain Dysfunctional", I wrote:There has been a series of bizarre conspiracy theories emanating from anxious leftists in the last 8 years as they attempt to keep the holes in their ideology plugged; thus preventing any reality from washing over them or flooding their cognitive processes.

Every time a leak in that ideological dike appears, the paranoid brand chewing gum is brought out to stop it up. The TNG memos were a clever plot by Karl Rove. The Bush Administration was behind 9/11; Katrina was allowed to destroy New Orleans because Bush hates blacks. George Bush is about to impose a theocracy on the unsuspecting U.S. Pat Tillman was murdered because he wanted to meet with anti-war activist Norm Chomsky. The list of the paranoid delusions goes on and on and on.

Taken as a whole, they are evidence of an ongoing and determined refusal to face reality--because it is a reality that threatens the belief systm of a whole section of the American population. Without the delusions and conspiracies concocted by the always creative political left, their whole house of Marxist cards will come crumblin down.

Erica Jong and her equally paranoid friends are perfect examples of how the bacteria of paranoid stupidity is spread. The infecting agent is usually a true believer who cannot face some unpleasant aspect of reality (i.e. that always "unpleasant truth") that is starting to trickle out into the open. It must dammed up immediately. The paranoid gum is handy and easy to use--just chew it up and plaster it over the hole.

For the political left, the gum has created a full blown conspiracy theory that links the Bush Administration to anything bad in the world--in this case to discredit a celebrity military hero who died under tragic circumstances, but who died fighting for his country. Such a bizarre distortion of the cirucumstances of his death serves to undermine his bona fides as a real patriot while demonizing the entire Bush Administration and the war on terror. It is simply another manifestation of BDS.

Just as the Jews serve as the handy scapegoat on which the dysfunctional Arab/Islamic culture in the Middle East can blame all their own societal failures; Conservatives and the political right serve the function of being the source of all evil in American society to the dysfunctional political left. If they did not have a George Bush on which to blame all societies ills, they would have to invent him--or, in recent weeks, we have seen how they have forced Sarah Palin into the same scapegoat mold, prepared to transfer all their rage and hostility toward her. Not to have such a scapegoat on which to project their own inadequacies would mean they would have to question some very basic assumptions about their fantasized superiority.

For the White House to employ an operative whose responsibility is, fundamentally, to direct a political strategy aimed, not at shaping is response to criticism but to take down a single media figure goes well beyond of the pale of an acceptable response.

Limbaugh is a private citizen--a celebrity, to be sure, but a private citizen and if the government can go after him, or Rick Santelli, or Joe the Plumber; they can just as easily try to destroy you or me for political purposes.

And meanwhile, even as they invent a new "bad guy", the more delusional and "progressive" members of Congress who seem not to be entirely able to "moveon" are still trying to demonize Bush and anyone else who worked in that Administration. This, they feel, is an absolute necessity because to let Bush and his achievements in Iraq and in the protection of the US stand destroys the entire ideological foundation of the left (such as it is--since they believe in nothing but their own power and trust nothing but their own feelings).

Meanwhile, the "One" who was going to restore our image in the world is busy sending his foreign policy team to suck up to all the dictators, tyrants and terrorists of the world and simply can't be bothered to spend any quality time with a real ally . As Mark Steyn notes, there are two possible explanations for the humiliations inflicted by the Obama Administration on Mr. Brown:

One is that (as several alleged experts have told me) in this area the president genuinely differs from his predecessors. Take that Martin Gilbert biography of Churchill the Prime Minister gave him: I'll wager Obama will never read a word of it. To him, Sir Winston is not the great wartime leader, the indispensable man in civilization's darkest hour (1940-41), but the post-war leader responsible for the ruthless suppression of the Mau-Mau rebellion in his father's Kenya. Churchill is not the way to Obama's heart.

And, in a broader sense, he has no particular attachment to "the west" — to the transatlantic partnership, the Anglo-American relationship, any of it. As I touched on in NR the other week, to his admirers he represents a cooler post-western "hybridity." And, given where he chose to spend his entire adult life, that seems entirely likely.

The simpler explanation, which I find more persuasive, is that he's just too narcissistic: He's the star and these foreign prime ministers are rather dreary extras. And unfortunately he's not a good enough actor to conceal his lack of interest in them. And his courtiers take pretty much the same line, which is why it never occurred to them that some no-name Brit would be insulted at not getting the multi-flagged joint presser.

Personally, I think both are true. Obama is proving to be the worst type of narcissist--a malignant one. His "bold" actions in the first 6 weeks of power illustrate a person who is acting out (acting out behavior is the direct expression of an unconscious wish or impulse to avoid being conscious of the emotion that accompanies it) - another favorite immature defense mechanism that the minions of leftist ideology use all the time.

And, needless to say, when your "messiah" is acting out unconscious conflicts it implicitly encourages the same kind of acting out behavior in the worshipful, adoring followers. Malignant narcissism and sociopathic selflessness are the order of the day for the next four years.

The political psychopathology of the left is accelerating, and we will all now pay the price.